Since it started snowing yesterday long before they said it would, I knew that I would be snowed in for a while. I started Baldur's Gate which I have had for quite some time and could never play. Just a couple of questions please. What is the minimum amount of people you should have in your party? I'm not good with handling a lot and having them fight around me. I tend to lose track of them and all of a sudden they're dead. Can I just have Imoen with me and complete the game? Also, is there some trick with fighting? I keep whacking people and things with my sword and I keep getting an identifying sign telling me what or who they are and it's very hard to kill them. I'm really at the beginning of the game (I just got to the Friendly Arms Inn) but I don't find it easy. I may just play this game until the snow melts.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant

Hi, Fildil. You don't have to have other party members, but it's recommended, as the combat gets more challenging. Imoen's good to have for thief-type duties, but you'd be hard-pressed to complete the game with just her and your main character. But it's a big game with a number of recruitable characters here and there, so there's no rush on fleshing out your party. I'd recommend using a walkthrough, and, if you need it (like I did), there's a character editor available that helps. Can't remember the gameplay well enough to give you any fighting tips, but I think you have to take enemies' resistances and vulnerabilities into account to make your attacks more effective. It's a real good game, but you sorta gotta sink your teeth into it, if you know what I mean.

Like Sig said, the game is considerably harder with a smaller party, especially for the bigger fights along the main storyline.

Baldur's Gate is a complicated game, I'm not going to attempt to explain everything here, but just a reminder to always hit the spacebar to pause the game for every fight to issue commands to your party members. Even better, you can go to the main menu, click the Gameplay button, hit Auto-Pause, and check out the options for pausing. I highly recommend choosing auto-pause when enemy sighted (I think that's what it's called) so the game will pause automatically when an enemy is within sight of any of your party members.

Your chances of hitting an enemy involve a bunch of factors, like how proficient you are with that weapon type, and the armor factor of the enemy. Low level characters just starting out will miss often just because you're low level and your THACO (chance of hitting) is a high number, but that will improve over time.

Read the manual if you haven't already, and also check out THIS GUIDE for lots of good info.

And yes, you will be playing until the snow melts, I spent months finishing it my first time.

I'm actually re-playing with a cleric and an evil-aligned party and have just finished Chapter 4. Feel free to ask questions!

This is game that I played that taught me to use parties..and you will not regret it.I may put my game on board and play along if I can..that way we can help each other. The number in the party...we want a royal flush + one

Thanks everybody, this gives me hope. I'm really going to try to play this game this time and hope that I won't lose too many people in the undertaking. ;)Ingie, I'm assuming that you mean 6 party members in all (my math skills leave a lot to be desired). I'll just wait a while to see who's available. I guess I'll need a mage but I've always had trouble with magic spells. In Planescape Torment I could never figure out how to use all those scrolls I picked up.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant

Oh you're right I didn't make that clear..I count me as 1 and then those 6 folks in the puter..

I loaded and ready to go...don't worry about the mages..not now; unless you want to be one?I would like to play as you are..I already played a bit so it would come back to me..just let me know..I'm so picky..it takes me a test run of all my choices before I decide. drives me nuts..but I think half the fun is picking "me" out

Well Ingie, I was playing last night and I got Imoen killed. I stopped playing and will pick up later today. Jeez, I only had her in my party, can't wait until I have more. I'm playing like I always do as a Paladin, I really don't like magic (except in DD when it was so easy). If anyone else is playing with me, I'm afraid you're all going to leave me in the dust since I'm probably going to have to keep going back to old saved games because of fatalities.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant

Thanks for the encouragement hagatha. I need all the help I can get. I've made it to Beregost with three party members. Seems as though I should've progressed a little farther than this but I've been exploring every little bit of the areas I've been in so far. I think that I'll be playing long after the snow melts. My golf league starts on April 13. I wonder how far along I'll be by then.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant

BG is a long game. It took me three months to play it through the first time. Exploring every area is the smart thing to do, because there are goodies stashed all over the place.

Do you have the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion and BG 2 and its expansion? If not, try to get them. With Ingie to keep you company there's lots of fun to be had. BG 2 is one of the finest games I've every played - I still load it up every now and then (played it three times in a row last year - my ninth, tenth and eleventh go round, or something ridiculous like that).

Yep, I just had her get killed... Sadly..did I save NO....make sure you save very often..don't do as I do, but as I say..wish I would listen to my own advise..rats, and I did all the quests with this one.I'm going to be a female human fighter this time around I think..or I thought

Well Ingie, those spiders in Beregost have gotten me or my party quite a few times so far. I keep drinking antidotes but they don't seem to work fast enough. I'll keep trying. A question please. I've read the manual (well parts of it) and I can't seem to find how you drop a party member, do you know how? Of course, at the rate I'm going, I can get them all killed off. Hagatha, I bought these games about three years ago on ebay. I got Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II Throne of Bhaal and Shadows of Amn. I bought them all separately so I don't if they're the expansion or not. I should have played Baldur's Gate before I bought the other two seeing how much trouble I'm having in the first big town I've come to.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant

Fil, the normal way to drop a party member is to select your character, click the "head" button on the left side of the interface, and click the Reform Party button, click on the member you want to ditch, click OK, yada yada, then the character says something to you ("Nuts to you!") and either leaves forever or stays put in case you change your mind.

Who did you want to get rid of? Be aware that many NPC's are paired up with other characters (Khalid & Jaheira, Xzar & Montaron) and if you kick one out the other automatically leaves too. There are ways around this, though, such as trapping the one you want to ditch inside a building and then removing them from the outside, or getting the person killed on purpose, then removing them.

Those spiders are tough, I like to use Jaheira's entangle spell to immobilize them, then using spells and ranged weapons to pick them off. The house is small, though, so inevitably someone will be too close to them for this to work, try leaving some people outside the house to make room inside.

I ran into a problem yesterday where the game would crash when we tried to enter Baldur's Gate city for the first time. I emptied the cache, temp, and tempsave folders, and did a de-frag and now we are back in business, so watch out Iron Throne!!

As per usual Schwab, right after I asked the question I found the answer when I went into Character. I was thinking of dropping Kagain. Is it normal to keep switching between Disc 2 and 3? I've done it about 6 times already. I've stopped playing for the night since I got Imoen killed again. I'm really not so good at this.

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Fil

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant